first Easter get-together

Napowrimo #10: celebrate! Write about a birthday party, a wedding, a baptism — any kind of celebration where you were with family or friends or both. Write about the colors you remember, the sounds (and how they made you feel) and the tastes you remember from any of those events. Did these things make you feel good? Did you experience any new foods? Did you meet any new people? Read Write Poem prompt here.

Over the orange salad bowl,
stir pig’s ears, sliced cucumber,
roast meat, and did you know,
he got baptized yesterday.

(I stirred the dish, confusing
Easter with Christmas.
Easter ’s more important.
Everybody knows that.)

Oh wow, I imagine Bryan
being blessed & anointed.
Marie’s genuinely pleased.
(I’m still pagan, didn’t make it
to catechism. Will I ever?)

Somebody’s sulky & sat
eating in the garden.
Whose dog’s on a leash?
Why did you bring the dog?
(Don’t ask. Lovers’ quarrel
on parents’ anniversary.)

It’s getting really crowded,
Happy Easter! Help yourselves.
Beef & potato stew scooped
over rice, yummilicious!
Why not eating Waldorf salad?

Marie made cocoa jelly!
Everybody loves but
isn’t that for Christmas?
Switch hats. It’s Easter &
stop thinking it’s Christmas.

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Christmas comes but once a year

image of Christmas nuts by pussling

image of sugee cake by Taking5

image of Curry Devil by Ah Hood Gardens

Different cultures have a version of an annual family get-together. In the US, there’s Thanksgiving. In Singapore, the different ethnic groups carved out a feast on annual occasions. For the Eurasians, it’s the Christmas season.

Another Christmas. I will retrieve the dog-eared
invitees list clipped onto the Marks and Spencers
address book. A weary movement of wrist flicking
through the presents list, the same list, repeated.
My heart used to trail chocolate truffles and walnuts.

Scented candles in a nook. The holly wreath hung
on the door’s eternal hook. Chipolata sausages set to
grill. Thinly sliced Virginia ham, a pitcher of tiny forks.
Sugee cake, crumbly. The guests chomped on the same
hors d’oeuvres. Pots brimmed with Christmas curries.

Older siblings on the wrong side of fifty, every one
middling. Serial kisses on the cheek, beary hugs.
For those you’re miffed with, a slight palm shake.
Christmas jingles. Sins forgiven, even if not forgotten.
The deepest cut, the ghost of your mum’s cooking.

Cousins with like faces played raucous console games.
Adolescent breakouts. Adults cracked walnuts, laughing.
The girls, once in frocks, suddenly smoky with make-up.
I guess no one will do the limbo rock. We almost rolled on
the floor laughing. All souls inebriated, toasty karma.

Time to haul out the same gold-speckled Christmas tree.
Time to turn to your mum’s recipe, the one for curry devil,
scribbled in a green notebook, standing next to her as
chillis, onions, garlic, candlenuts waited on the cutting
board for the blender, as I hunted for mustard seeds.

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